


every touch (a redefining phrase)

by eachandeverydimension



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-24 05:16:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2569532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eachandeverydimension/pseuds/eachandeverydimension
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Surely he would wake up soon and find himself again exiled in Monmouth Manufacturing or in the back seat of his car or lying on the floor beside Adam’s bed at St Agnes.”</p>
<p>Adam and Ronan: a love story in three locations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1136 Monmouth Manufacturing

The first day Adam meets Gansey, he heads over to Monmouth after school because his work doesn’t start until four and Gansey wants to tell him more about Glendower. The books, the soaring ceiling, the sheer vastness of the space leaves Adam speechless. Up until that moment, he had not truly seen the extent of Gansey’s wealth, how it permeated every facet of his being. Gansey did not only own a vintage Camaro, he did not only attend Aglionby. He had enough cash to buy mountains of books, purchase pieces of equipment only used once, to live in an entire warehouse on his own. Gansey did not show it off, but having money was such an inextricable part of him that Adam was sure if Gansey wasn’t born in a moneyed family, he would lose some of his _Ganseyness_. Monmouth was unconventional, quirky, and very much Gansey’s style. On the drive over, he’d explained how Monmouthshire was a Welsh town, and home of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who had written a book about the history of British kings over the sounds of the Pig’s engine. Gansey didn’t believe in coincidences. When he had driven past Monmouth Avenue the first time, he decided there and then that he would live there.

The walls made of millions of windows, the mint plant on his desk, the untidy writing that could be seen poking out of books or on the essays on his desk. These things all seemed very Gansey, from what Adam had learnt of him in one short day. Also very him was the refrigerator wired into the bathroom, in which Gansey was now rooting around in for a drink for Adam. The most essential part of Gansey, however, was sitting on his bed, and staring at Adam hostilely. Ronan Lynch had sped past the Pig in his charcoal-grey car while Gansey was regaling Adam with his discoveries, only one hand on the steering wheel while the other gesticulated. When Gansey killed the Camaro’s engine and Adam realized just how much sound the car made in the absence of it, the BMW was already in the parking-lot. Upstairs, Ronan had changed into a black tank-top and deliberately tattered jeans. Although Adam had never understood the need to destroy perfectly good pieces of clothing, he had to admit that it looked good on Ronan. The tank-top revealed the pleasing curves of Ronan’s arms, defined by hours of physical activity but still pale. _Tennis_ , his mind supplied. Gansey had mentioned that.

Gansey had been gone a long while. There were occasional noises from the bathroom, things bumping against each other as Gansey reshuffled them, or sighs of frustration. Adam would dart his eyes towards the open bathroom door when a noise drifted out. His eyes would catch on the myriad of details this room seemed to hold: a word on the spine of a book, metallic contraptions he had never seen before, a bright red shirt peeking out of a closet. Ronan’s eyes did not wander. Every time Adam glanced back, his piercing blue eyes were locked on Adam. Adam did not like to be looked at. He aimed to vanish into the background. It was safer that way. He didn’t like how Ronan scrutinized him. He wished Gansey were back here so that he could be a barrier between Ronan’s gaze and Adam.

Finally, a sigh.

“So. You’re Parrish, huh,” Ronan said. His eyes stopped roaming Adam’s body and settled on his face. One side of his mouth quirked up slightly, a smirk in the making. For some absurd reason Adam felt like he had been deemed worthy of Ronan’s acquaintance.

“Welcome to the Glendower Expedition Club. Club activities every single waking hour headed by our fearless leader," he said, flicking his fingers in Gansey’s direction. "No pulling out allowed.”

Ronan got off the bed, unfolding himself in the most elegant way. His pale skin flashed in the sunlight and so did the pair of car keys he drew out from his pocket. He tilted his head lazily towards the bathroom and Adam silently admired the long line of Ronan's throat.

“Stop searching, loser. I drank the last soda. I’ll drive out and get Parrish a drink, if he’s so thirsty,” Ronan said.

“Ronan,” Gansey said, poking his head out from the bathroom. It was a little bit of a reprimand, chiding and worn, like Gansey used this tone often. “You couldn’t have said earlier? Before I wasted ten minutes of my life digging through the fridge?”

“I said I was going to get some. Orange juice?” Ronan said. Adam had not expected him to apologize, and he did not. Gansey gave a fond but irritated sigh.

“Apple.”

Ronan raised a hand to acknowledge Gansey without turning back and slammed the first floor door as he left.

Adam was acutely aware of Ronan's actions, his ears following the sounds Ronan made as he left. His tread on the creaky steps, the cheerful whistle his car made when he clicked the key, the slamming of the driver’s side door. Only when the smooth purring of the BMW's engine had faded into the distance did he look back at Gansey, who was leaning against the bathroom door with arms folded.

"So. That was Ronan," Adam said.


	2. The BMW

One slow day at the garage, Adam picked up a romance novel. It was lying next to the toolbox, and jarring to see amongst the grease and metal of the garage. A previous customer must have left it behind. He had nothing better to do, so Adam flicked through it. Reading was not a leisurely activity for him. Adam read for school, not for recreation. About half-way through the book, his eyes landed on a phrase: _he lived and breathed for her_. His thumb brushed along the pages again making a pleasant sound like whirring, and he spotted another phrase, this time at the end of a ridiculously long run-on sentence: _the notion that lungs only mattered if there was someone to breathe for_.

Adam thought that was a foolish thing to think, much less write down. He lived and breathed for himself, because no one else could be trusted. He breathed so he could finish his next essay, so he could fix another car, so he could work an extra hour at the factory. He lived to leave Henrietta, to be rich, to graduate Aglionby with top honors. Living and breathing for another person was ridiculous. Adam was pragmatic by necessity. The second phrase was no better. Lungs existed for survival, not for love. Adam drew breath every day, no matter how tired he was, so that he could find Glendower and get him to grant his wish. Love had nothing to do with it.

In rare moments those two phrases would float into his mind. _He lived and breathed for her. The notion that lungs only mattered if there was someone to breathe for._ Adam dismissed them as fanciful thoughts, of no use to him. But occasionally, he would have trouble sweeping them out of his mind. Something made them twist around his heart and echo in his ears.

This was one such occasion:

Ronan’s BMW was parked in the bicycle lot. Of course it was. The school day had ended, and Gansey had driven off in the Pig after worrying about Ronan. But then again, it was Gansey. He was always worrying about Ronan, the same way he was always thinking about Glendower. The BMW had not been in the parking lot though, so Gansey decided Ronan had probably headed back to Monmouth already. Adam had work so he was not with Gansey in the Pig. Instead, he walked towards the pathetic bicycle lot Aglionby had. Aglionby boys did not ride in anything that cost less than five figures, so his shitty bicycle was the sole occupant of the isolated bicycle racks.

Except the BMW was parked in the bicycle lot and Ronan was sprawled out in the backseat.

Adam could have easily pushed his bicycle past the BMW and left for work, but then he thought of two things. One, the purple smudges beneath Ronan’s eyes that day. Aglionby was having post-exam activities, the sort Adam would have skipped to go work an extra day at the garage if he hadn’t met Gansey. But because he _had_ met Gansey, Adam spent the whole afternoon drinking iced lemon tea and watching his classmates best each other in sports. During tennis, Ronan had hunched in one corner of the court scowling instead of dominating it as usual. Ronan was spectacularly good at tennis, and Adam suspected he took some kind of joy out of sending his opponents scrambling after the ball. Gansey had mentioned that Ronan had not been sleeping well. None of them were, since Cabeswater had been awakened.

Two, Declan had intercepted Adam while he had been walking towards the bicycle lot to ask after Ronan’s whereabouts. Adam didn’t think Ronan could hold his own in his current state if Declan found him, and Declan definitely would. He had a way of turning up at the worst time possible.

Adam stepped closer to the BMW and peered into it. Ronan was sleeping in the backseat, head pillowed on his arms and illuminated by the light streaming in through the car window while his legs were folded in the darkness of the drivers’ side. The sunlight made his pale skin glow and the sharp points of his tattoo were visible through his tennis whites. Adam could see the thread-thin veins in Ronan’s eyelids and the almost imperceptible rhythm of his pulse at his neck, something that seemed unbearably intimate.  Adam had not known that Ronan could stay so still for extended periods of time. A motionless Ronan was a dangerous one. Ronan was a predator, stalking his prey until he paused and went in for the kill. Adam had observed this for himself when Declan and Ronan came to blows. Ronan always went terribly still just before he dealt the final blow: an insult towards one of Declan’s interchangeable girlfriends, or a derisive remark about Declan that sent him storming away. Restlessness fit Ronan much more: chewing on his leather bracelets or picking at his scabs or drumming his fingers on the table surface. At least then Ronan had an avenue for expressing himself.

There was none of the tension that accompanied his customary stillness now. He was completely relaxed, body loose with exhaustion. Adam had never seen Ronan asleep before; Monmouth at night was a line he did not allow himself to cross. If he could not live in that palace, he would not taunt himself with the knowledge of what a night there felt like. Adam did not remind himself that he had broken his own rule last month.

Adam had never had a chance to observe Ronan at close quarters without being stared down before. Now, he savored the opportunity. His eyes committed to memory the graceful curve of his jaw and the softness of his mouth, and added it to his mental gallery right next to how Ronan had cradled Chainsaw in his hands when feeding her. Ronan Lynch had the capacity to be gentle, he simply didn’t show it. Adam would keep himself from wanting to punch Ronan the next time he was being an asshole by browsing through that mental gallery.

It was tempting to keep staring at this defenseless Ronan for a few moments longer, but Adam didn’t have the time. Declan would find Ronan sooner or later, and Ronan, disoriented with sleep, wouldn’t be able to defend himself. Besides, Adam had to get to work. He rapped his knuckles against the car window twice smartly.

Jerking awake violently, Ronan was briefly confused before his brain caught up and he rolled down the car window.

“Jesus, Parrish. You scared the hell outta me,” Ronan said while sitting up and squinting his eyes against the sunlight.

“Declan’s looking for you. You should get out of here before he succeeds,” Adam said.

“When _isn’t_ he looking for me?” Ronan said, pressing his knuckles into his eyes. “Goddamn, when did it get so hot?” He leaned over the driver’s seat and switched on the engine. The quiet hum of the BMW’s air-conditioning filled the car.

“Get in, Parrish. You’re letting the cold air out,” Ronan said.

“I have work.” Adam said.

“I know. Get in.” Ronan said.

A warring instinct in Adam urged him not too, but it wasn’t between Ronan and Adam that a tangible tension had materialized. The recipient of that honor was currently speeding off towards Monmouth, slowly rubbing his bottom lip off.

Adam got in.

The warm smell of the BMW engulfed him. With the frequency Ronan drank, Adam would have expected the interior to stink of alcohol, but surprisingly, he found out the first time Gansey had begged off driving Adam home that it did not. Instead, the BMW smelled comforting: the buttery-soft scent of leather seats, the organic smell of moss and just a hint of lemon cleaner, even though Adam doubted Ronan had ever cleaned his car.

Ronan sighed, weary and empty. One hand restlessly rubbed his face, shielding his eyes from Adam’s view. “Will you be my lookout? Wake me if Declan shows up and I’ll drive off before he pisses me off again.”

“Why not just go back to Monmouth?” Adam asked. All this seemed like unnecessary trouble when Ronan had a proper bed back in Monmouth. It was the sort of inconvenience Ronan loved to cause himself, like not answering his phone when he had one.

A pause, while Ronan considered how much of his hand he could show. “Gansey will worry.”

Not entirely untrue, but not the entire truth either. Adam decided not to pry.

“Not being able to find you worries him.” Adam said.

Ronan huffed out a laugh. “Believe me, this is better. Just for an hour, then I’ll drive you to work.”

Adam looked out the window at his shitty bike.

“Fine.” Adam hated taking hand-outs from his friends, but it had cost Ronan more to ask this favor of Adam than it cost Adam to take this free ride. Besides, it was an hour in the BMW’s air-conditioning that Adam could spend doing his World History reading, and an hour less that he would need to stay up after his second job at the trailer factory.

Ronan’s hands flitted from the driver’s headrest to his pockets. He tilted his head towards Adam, but kept his gaze fixed uncharacteristically on the receipts littered on the car floor. “Listen. If it looks like I’m having a nightmare, just leave. Don’t bother waking me up, just go to work on your bicycle.”

Before Adam could reply, he had settled himself again, sprawling in the back seat. His neck was tucked into his chest at an awkward angle, long legs folded cautiously. Adam was reminded of the way Chainsaw hunched on Ronan’s shoulder when the wind was strong, without the fluffed-up feathers and huffiness. Ronan stilled in the uncomfortable position. It figured that Ronan would sleep this way. He never did anything the easy method if there was a way to complicate things.

“Thanks, Parrish,” Ronan murmured. He shut his eyes.

Adam drew his history text from his messenger bag and placed it on his lap, fingers primed to turn to page 273, _Significant Events in the 1950s_. It was the following year’s content, but Adam always read ahead.

Instead, he found himself counting Ronan’s breaths. It took mere minutes before his breathing evened out and Ronan fell back into sleep, a testament to his fatigue. Unconsciously, Adam’s eyes had begun tracing Ronan’s sleeping features once again. The somber angle of his sooty lashes, the straightness of his defiant brows, the surprising delicacy of the jut of bone in his wrists. When he was not actively being an asshole, Ronan could grow on you. He was a walking collection of contradictions.

Adam’s hands itched to trace the lines of Ronan’s body just like his eyes did.

While he was observing the diffuse light reflecting off Ronan’s pale skin and his freshly-healed pink knuckles, two phrases slinked into Adam’s head.

_He lived and breathed for him._

_The notion that lungs only mattered if there was someone to breathe for._

A quick flick of his eyes at the BMW’s dashboard clock confirmed that Adam had been staring for seven minutes. He flicked the textbook open without his usual care, and trained his eyes on its contents. He did not allow his eyes to stray for its pages for the rest of the hour. Even when Ronan’s legs nudged their way into Adam’s space, Adam only allowed himself the briefest close of his eyes to savor the touch of their bare skin before suppressing the feeling with history facts.

Even when Ronan awakes with brighter eyes and renewed prickliness, even when they drive in silence to St Agnes, even when Adam returns ruined from the trailer factory, he doesn’t manage to chase those words out of his mind. They run around his mind evading capture until Adam suffocates himself into a restless sleep with his arm thrown over his nose. He dreams of whispering forests and dark lashes and knuckles half-healed.


	3. St Agnes

It shouldn’t have surprised Adam that Ronan loved hard. Ronan tended to have only two attitudes towards people: outright hostility or complete adoration. He was a switch with only two settings where other people were dimmers. Granted, there were very few people in latter category of adoration, but still. Adam should have seen it coming.

It was in the way he was so very indulgent towards those he loved: Matthew’s _hey pals_ and Aurora’s motherly hand pats. It was in how he didn’t hold back in his loathing of Declan, utterly blind to anything but his faults. Ronan took a long time to warm up to someone, but once he did there was nothing they could do to offend him and make him reconsider. Conversely, short of not being born or reviving Niall Lynch, nothing Declan did would be enough to redeem him. So really, Adam shouldn’t have been surprised. The signs had been there from the first day he met Ronan.

Still, Ronan’s gradual ceding of the Pig’s passenger seat to Blue caught Adam off guard. He spent more trips in the backseat with Adam, both of them pressed close like the Pig was half its actual size. So did the gradual segregation when driving anywhere: Ronan and Adam in the BMW while Gansey, Blue and Noah took the Pig. It was never spoken, but obvious nonetheless, judging by Noah’s sniggers when Adam and Ronan discretely peeled off from the rest of the group in Monmouth’s parking-lot.

Truly, Adam hadn’t expected this. He didn't expect midnight drives to the Barns and stargazing in the middle of the grazing field with a thermos of hot chocolate in his hand, or waking up in the morning next to Ronan with dewy eyelashes and chilled to the bone but so incandescently happy like he’s never thought possible before.

He didn't expect to get free rein of the Barns, or munching on toast made by Niall Lynch's dream toaster as he drew a finger through the layer of dust gathered on Ronan's old desk. He didn’t expect invitations into Ronan’s _sanctum sanctorum_ , wondering aloud whether the plants in the Barns still photosynthesized while Ronan’s socked feet were buried under Adam’s knees in his room at Monmouth.

But this is what he has. A Ronan who will discretely tug Adam into a shadowy corner of Borden House before Latin and kiss him slow and sweet when he can tell Adam had a bad night at work. A Ronan who puts up with Adam and eats convenience store sandwiches when Adam is being stubborn and stupid about his pride or money, since the two are almost interchangeable.

Ronan is so good to him that sometimes Adam feels a little broken inside. He knows he is broken, and it’s not just his ear or the countless bruises he’s worn and hidden. Something crucial in him has cracked from all of Robert Parrish’s beatings, and a flawed product is less than Ronan deserves. But somehow, against all odds, something has finally worked out in Adam’s favour, and this flawed product is exactly what Ronan wants. So Adam counts his blessings and Ronan’s kisses and the times there is electricity in the contact of their skin, and now when he lies awake at night thinking of what to ask Glendower, there is a bittersweet feeling in his chest when he whispers _never take Ronan away from me._

*

One Saturday morning Ronan pulls up in front of St Agnes and yells for Adam to come down.

When Adam wrests the rusty hinge on his window open and shouts back, “What is it? We have calculus to do!” Ronan just gives Adam an imperious look that says, _screw calculus._

“So bring your calculus. I have tuna sandwiches and an old towel that could pass for a picnic mat. We’re going on a field trip.”

Adam stares at Ronan for a beat, considering what it would be like to refuse him before he grabs his sneakers and makes his way down the rickety stairs. The calculus textbook stays on the cardboard box beside his bed.

He had always been bad at turning Ronan down.

*

The destination of their field trip turned out to be Cabeswater.

Ronan parks the BMW a distance away from the forest, and they trek into the forest. Adam is holding two paper bags containing their lunch, and Ronan has a ratty blue towel slung over his shoulder. Chainsaw flaps alongside them noisily, cutting ahead of them to peck at interesting things and then shrieking back to Ronan to inform him of her finds.

When they plunge into the forest, it takes only a few steps before the crisp fall leaves crunching below their feet turn soggy from snowmelt. Before long, snow starts falling, a brief but fierce flurry that sends Chainsaw squawking back to Ronan’s shoulder. When it stops, Ronan ruffles Adam’s hair gently to get rid of the snowflakes, and something inside Adam thrills. Spring flowers, bright and impossible, bloom in the same time that they take to wither. Adam quickly brushes his fingertips over the soft white petals of a spray of aster blooms before they fade away. Oppressive and humid, summer air settles around them as they reach a clearing. The grass beneath their feet, just the slightest bit crisp from the sun, turns into mossy slabs of rock which fringe a swimming hole. It’s surrounded with trees, weeping willows that trail their melancholy branches over the water surface and tall oaks that cast their shadows over the water. It’s so picturesque that Ronan must have held this image in his mind from the moment they stepped foot into the forest.

Ronan lays out the tatty towel under the shade of the oak, and lies down. Adam places the tuna sandwiches next to Ronan’s head, and lies down next to him. In the shade, the heat is more bearable, more of a drowsy warmth than blistering. When Ronan gets bored of lying down, which takes all of five minutes, he jumps up and walks out of the oak’s shadow. He squints at the water for a few seconds, then peels off his black T-shirt. His pale skin glows in the light, and renders him a miniature sun of his own. He looks back at Adam, eyebrow cocked as if to say are you coming, Parrish? Then he jumps in and splashes into the water obnoxiously and loudly.

Faced with this image, all Adam can do is laugh helplessly and shrug his shirt off to join Ronan. He gets into the water more cautiously and propels himself towards where Ronan is standing triumphantly in the centre of the water by nudging the slippery rock with his toes.

“Hello.” Adam says.

“Hello.” Ronan has a tiny smile on his face, really more of just an upwards twitch of the left side of his mouth. His gaze is unbearably direct, like he’s seeing through all of Adam.

And then Ronan is leaning down, and Adam is tilting his head up until their mouths meet. They kiss slow and sweet and soft. Adam’s eyes drift shut slowly, so he can focus on the feeling of Ronan’s lips against his. His hands trail up Ronan’s arms, until they’re linked at the back of his neck. Ronan uses his wet fingers to comb through Adam’s hair and tug his mouth into a deeper angle. Then all of a sudden he breaks apart, and Adam is about to open his eyes to ask what’s wrong, when the hand in his hair pushes him down into the water. When he surfaces, breathless and laughing, Ronan has his hands up in the air and a guileless look on his face.

“It was an accident, I swear,” he says, but a smirk is already creeping onto his face.

Adam splashes some water directly into Ronan’s mouth, and relishes the look of pure affront on his face before declaring war.

“You’re going down, Lynch!”

*

A truce is declared only when the sun becomes too hot. They hide in the dappled shadows of the weeping willow, so close that Ronan’s arms are hooked at the small of Adam’s back, drawing distracting circles onto his skin. Adam’s hair is plastered down with water and he’s aware he probably looks ridiculous, but Ronan is looking at him with one of those unbearably fond looks he gets sometimes, so he lowers the hand that was going to fix his hair. He mourns for a moment when Ronan’s hands leave his skin, but thrills again, the same way he does every time Ronan touches him, when he starts to follow the curve of Adam’s jaw. He’s confused for a moment when Ronan’s hands continue to travel up, past his ears and start to comb his hair upwards. It only takes the shit-eating smile on Ronan’s face to realise what he’s doing.

“You are not giving a mohawk, Ronan Lynch.”

Except Ronan is, and Adam isn’t doing anything to stop him. He isn’t sure he can bring himself to stop Ronan, really. Not when he’s grinning at Adam like this, face all lit-up with joy. His fingers gently scratch Adam’s scalp as coaxes his hair towards the crown of his head, then he settles back with his hands on his hips.

“Perfect, Parrish. I do believe you should thank me.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” is all Adam says, before he captures Ronan’s lips.

*

Adam is a practical person.

Out of the four of them, he’s probably the one with the most common sense. Gansey can’t change his oil without getting his slacks dirty, and Noah was spectacularly bad at anything that involved tools. (Actually, Noah was disqualified by sheer virtue of being a ghost. He was the furthest thing from practical.) Ronan planned several reckless projects a year, but never seemed to complete them. Neither had he ever opened the hood of the BMW, except to act as a decoy that time they body-snatched Noah. Adam had never seen the BMW break down before. Initially he just suspected Ronan secretly took good care of his car, or more likely, that the BMW was a finely engineered piece of technology that could take Ronan’s abuses. Now, he realised that the BMW never malfunctioned because it was a dreamt thing.

Adam is a practical person, but he's quite sure he's lost any right he has to call himself that after this.

Both of them aren't dressed for rain, having left their jackets back behind in the car when they headed out for Cabeswater. When they emerge, flushed with summer and lazy with heat, the cold autumn drizzle shocks them. The wind cuts through their flimsy t-shirts and straight to their bones. Their shirts get wet, quarter-sized drops turning the material dark. Ronan's hand finds Adam's and they hunch together against the wind as they make their way from the tree line to the BMW. When they reach it, Adam presses Ronan against its side. He traces the curve of Ronan's lip with his thumb before he kisses him, tongue curling into that summer heat. Ronan's hipbones are pressed against Adam's almost painfully. Someone’s chilly hands delve into a shirt to seek skin. Adam isn’t quite sure which of them it is. It could be both.

In these moments, something curls in Adam's stomach, slow and sure. It isn't arousal, though that's certainly present. It's something deeper and stronger, purer somehow, something that whispers in his mind _yesyesyesyes this is how it’s meant to be_ while he cups Ronan’s jaw and angles their kiss deeper. There are water droplets in Ronan’s eyelashes and rainwater in their mouths, and it would be so much more sensible to wait till they get into the BMW to make out, but they don’t.

Chainsaw has huddled in the relative shelter beneath the BMW, and when she finally gets tired of waiting, starts to nip their ankles. Their shirts are both soaked through when they go into the BMW. Even then, they let the car idle and the sound of rain pounding on the roof fill the silence for a long moment, fingers reluctant to leave their niches and breath mixing. Only when Chainsaw squawks and splatters the two of them with rain do they break apart with laughter.

So there. Adam was once a practical person, but he’s quite certain Ronan Lynch has ruined him forever.

*

Adam was tired. Not the rotten kind of tired that came from a six-hour shift at the trailer factory, or cramming for a physics exam. It was a good kind of tired. He was tired from doing things he loved. This was a rare kind of exhaustion that Adam nearly never got the chance to experience, and had never existed before Gansey came into his life. He remembered the first time he felt like this: traipsing around in the Virginia mountains with Gansey and Ronan, looking for traces of Glendower. Lugging around EMF meters and dowsing rods and bottles of iced tea.

They had traded jokes and climbed trees just for the sake for it, and Adam had forgotten about everything that worried him for a brief joyous afternoon. That night when he fell exhausted into his too-thin mattress, he was still having a hard time keeping the smile off his face, mind poring over the events of the day.

This was how he felt now: euphoric and exhausted simultaneously. He wanted to relive the entire day, he wanted to fall into a deep sleep, he wanted to stay up all night and stare at Ronan lying on his chest.

But mostly the third. Adam’s eyes were almost falling shut, but still he resisted and slitted his eyes in the barest impression of wakefulness. In the stark moonlight, Adam’s tiny room in St Agnes was painted in black and white and shadow and light. Ronan’s right shoulder overlapped with Adam’s, the two of them crammed onto Adam’s tiny mattress. Adam was relatively sure that Ronan’s feet were dangling off the end of it. Adam’s right hand held onto the small of Ronan’s back, and Ronan’s right hand was pressed next to Adam’s heart. With his left hand, Adam slowly traced Ronan’s tattoo, the hooked ends and gentle curves that marked his shoulders.

Ronan had a tendency to bring out the sentimental in him, because as he followed those stark black lines with his fingertips, Adam suddenly felt jealous of Ronan’s tattoo, of how they would stay with him forever the way Adam desperately wished he could.

If- more and more these days, it felt more like a _when_ \- they found Glendower, Adam knows he will not be selfish enough to ask for Ronan by his side. He will ask for Gansey to be spared.

Adam knows that one day, probably soon, Ronan and he will have to part ways. For the first sixteen years their lives had developed in parallel, separated only by a thirty minute drive. Then they had entangled, become hopelessly wound together when Gansey and Adam and Ronan and Noah and Blue had collided that one day. And now, inevitably, after they had all grown used to each other’s presence, their threads were unwinding and untangling, stretching further and further apart as they grew closer to finding Glendower.

Gansey – _Gansey_. Gansey will stay in Henrietta, either by choice or – because he can’t make the choice for himself. No – Adam will make it so that the second option never comes to pass. Ronan and he managed to persuade Cabeswater to keep them safe in the cave. They were capable of keeping Gansey alive too. Adam had already seen two of his closest friends dead – one bleeding out on a church floor and the other buried with a crushed skull. Gansey – foolish, charming, courageous _Gansey_ , who had been growing more and more uncertain about this quest now – could not come to that fate. If – _when_ – Adam saved Gansey, after they found Glendower and Adam used that royal favor to keep Gansey alive, Gansey would stay in Henrietta. He had fallen in love with Henrietta after a fashion, so loathe to leave her even for his parent’s mansion in D.C, infinitely more comfortable than Monmouth. It had happened so slow even Gansey was not cognizant, the same way he had fallen for Blue. No, Gansey would not leave.

Blue wanted to, Adam could tell. 300 Fox Way stifled her, the same way Henrietta stifled Adam. Their untapped potential could not be drawn upon until they left the town limits. With the additional factor of Gansey though, Adam could not be sure what Blue would do. Leave Henrietta – and by extension Gansey behind? Or would she somehow manage to convince Gansey to leave with her, to return when they finished their studies? Or maybe – how this would chafe Blue’s pride – Gansey would fund her studies and leave with her and never return to Henrietta again. Trade one lover for another, in a way.

Ronan. Leaving Henrietta, leaving the Barns, leaving Matthew and Aurora was completely out of question for Ronan. Now he had it back, Ronan would never leave that mystical dream home for anywhere else. Why would he? Nowhere else would be rich enough to support his dreams. Adam was hard-pressed to imagine Ronan in university. Under duress, he could maybe imagine Ronan taking Latin, but even then only grudgingly. Adam wasn’t so sure that Ronan liked Latin as much as he liked looking like a pretentious asshole by speaking Latin. (Or, a little part of his mind whispered, maybe he had gotten so good so that he could understand his dreams.)

It was only a matter of time, now. Their last year of Aglionby, the last year of their quest, the last year of this strange friendship they shared, where they lived in each other’s pockets and knew what the others were thinking before they did. Things were drawing to an end all too soon.

He feels Ronan’s eyelashes flutter against his cheek, and Adam reeled himself back from those thoughts, the same way he did from Cabeswater when he fell too deep in.

Ronan’s ear was pressed to Adam’s heart, and his head rose and fell with Adam’s every breath. His eyes had slid shut already, and his breathing had slowed down, so Adam is sure that Ronan has fallen asleep. He lets his eyes close too, succumbing to his fatigue.He is just on the knife-edge of falling asleep when he hears something.

_Philtatos_ , Ronan whispers into Adam’s collarbone.

Ronan had never been very good with words. But Adam had learnt to read him, long before this _thing_ , whatever it is, happened between them. He can tell when Ronan’s in a good mood by the volume of his hideous stereo electronica, or when Declan’s just called from the tightness in his jaw. Ronan’s emotions were all there on show, as long as you knew how to look. Thoughts were a little harder, but Adam felt like he mostly had the hang of it. When Ronan flicked a few drops of water onto Gansey’s drooping mint plant, he was saying _thanks for putting up with my shit_. When he made a barbed comment about Noah’s metaphysical state or sometimes just outright threw him out a window, he was saying _it doesn’t matter if you’re dead, you’re still my friend._

Adam knows better than asking Ronan what he means. Instead, he tightens his arm around Ronan’s waist and turns his head so that his lips press to Ronan’s temple and lets himself fall asleep while pouring the word through his mind. _Philtatos_.

*

On Sunday afternoons, they all gravitate together and gather in Monmouth as they are wont to do with any free time. Gansey and Adam force Ronan to complete his homework that’s been due since last term, so he scrawls half-heartedly at an essay in his room with the door open. Gansey is sprawled on his bed, lazily pouring over his journal. Adam distractedly entertains Chainsaw, caught up in his own thoughts until Noah interests him in a game. They take turns to toss pennies into a can down at the ground floor until they get tired of it, then climb up the stairs with the peculiar metallic scent of coins on their hands.

When they get back onto the first storey, Gansey is squinting at Ronan’s tattoo in a way that’s meant to be inconspicuous, but really isn’t. Ronan is, somewhat surprisingly, actually focusing and putting down more of his chicken scratch onto the college ruled paper in front of him.

“What?” Adam says, fitting his face into the space above Gansey’s right shoulder so he can stare at Ronan from the same angle.

“Don’t you think Ronan’s shoulders look sunburnt?” Gansey whispers.

Adam knows for a fact they are, had helped smooth some aleo left over from the summer onto Ronan’s shoulders in his room at St Agnes before he headed down for service. But Gansey is looking so befuddled, the wrinkle in his brow due to some trivial matter for once, that Adam just shrugs noncommittally.

Gansey asks Noah the same thing, but Noah only gives a secretive smile and darts his eyes towards Adam, so Gansey finally directs his query towards Ronan.

“Ronan. Are your shoulders sun-burnt?” Gansey asks.

From where he’s working on his essay, Ronan looks up and shrugs. “I guess. So?”

“It’s been raining for the last three days. Where would you get sunburnt?” Gansey’s voice gets a little shrill at the end of his question, and Adam can’t suppress the small huff of laughter that comes out.

“Adam what’s so-” Gansey says, and then Adam remembers that the bridge of his nose is sunburnt as well when he realizes that Gansey is staring at it with a dawning look of betrayal.

“You two went to Cabeswater without me!” Gansey accuses, as if they haven’t been to Cabeswater more than ten times since the rainy weather has started. There’s a long-suffering sigh from Ronan’s room as he heaves himself up from his desk.

Adam slips into Ronan’s room while he’s distracted with placating Gansey, and picks up the dreamt box reclaimed from the Grey Man. Letter by letter, he inputs _philtatos_ into the box, and it whirs into life under his fingertips, infinite little cogs spinning within it powered by dream energy, before the other sides too are filled. When Adam reads the side with the English translation, his heart seizes almost painfully.

_Most beloved._

He looks at Ronan in the main room of Monmouth, scribbling a list of things to bring to Cabeswater later that afternoon as Gansey’s reluctant amanuensis, and he can feel something capsizing in his chest with how much he loves him. Again, he feels his conviction to ask Glendower for Gansey’s life wavering, feels his selfishness creeping up and whispering into his ear _wouldn’t you like to have him forever?_

Adam closes his eyes and answers, _yes yes yes_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand apologies for taking so long with this last chapter, life has been really busy! It ended up being more of a Cabeswater/St Agnes/Monmouth hybrid instead of just St Agnes, but I hope you guys still liked it. Thanks for giving kudos and commenting :)
> 
> (I'm also a sucker for flower language, so I couldn't miss a chance to make a Pynch moment with flowers. Asters mean contentment.)


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